Loaded die whose one-roll and two-roll laws agree
Question
A six-sided die showing to is loaded so that, for each , the chance of getting on a single roll equals the chance that the sum of two independent rolls equals . Writing for the probability of a , it turns out is the unique positive root of an equation with real coefficients . What is ?
Short answer
. Matching two-roll sums gives , , , and so on, so with Catalan numbers . Normalising, , and the coefficients sum to .
Adapted from QuantQuestions.io; question and answer rewritten by SelfMadeQuant.com.
See the hint and the full worked solution in the question bank (free account).
Open the worked solutionLessons behind this question
- Conditional Probability, Total Probability, and Bayes' Rule
- Counting and Combinatorics
- Expectation, Mean, and Variance
Start with a free lesson: Expectation, Variance and Covariance is part of a free topic. Create a free account, no card needed, to read it in full with worked solutions.
Read it free